One of the podcasts I enjoy is called “A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment.” It features one of my favorite authors, Sherman Alexie and fellow author Jess Walter in conversation, generally about the process of writing, but sometimes on topics as far afield as basketball and current events. They occasionally have a guest to interview and regularly feature readings of their newest works. Both write fiction and poetry, two genres that are a challenge to me, but I am fascinated by the processes by which they come up with ideas for their stories.

A few weeks ago, the two were talking about writing the stories that did not come to pass. When life presents a choice and the choice is made, there is always a potential story in the path not taken. What if I hat attended a different school from the one I did attend. What if there had been an accident instead of the near miss? What if our team had won the game instead of losing? Those speculations lead to stories for both Sherman and Jess.

I can see the potentials for stories in my own life. Before they had children, my parents considered purchasing a business in a different state. Banking financing wasn’t working out and they both had a desire to return home, where they established their business. But it leaves one wondering what might have happened were that the case. Would I have grown up with an alternate life, with different friends, with different loyalties? Or would I not have been born at all?

Susan and I had multiple options when we headed for graduate school. We chose the option where we had the best financial aid offers. The other options were farther away and had different professors. How might our lives unfolded had we made a different choice?

I can see the potential for stories in these speculations and perhaps one day I will pursue writing such a story.

On the other hand, as an essayist, it is entirely possible that I will never master the genre of fiction. I haven’t shown much promise in that field to date. The great American novel probably won’t come from my creativity. So far there hasn’t even been a short story worthy of submitting to a publisher.

Still, one wonders about the difference between fiction and non fiction. In another podcast, Sherman and Jess were joking about their ability to lie - at least to put a different spin on events than others. I’ve always tried to be truthful and to represent things honestly. Honesty and integrity were very important values to our parents and they spoke often about the need for honesty. Still, when I get together with my siblings these days it is clear that we have different memories. It is not just that some events stand out more prominently in the memory of one than another - we have memories of different events and often remember the same event in ways that are substantially different.

I have a very clear memory of a trip on which we took our dog in our airplane. I can remember the exact destination and even have a family photo to reinforce my memory. My brother remembers a different destination and quite a different trip. Discussing those differences with a sister I discovered that she has almost no memory of the trip at all. It just wasn’t a very significant event in her life.

When we are together, story after story told about our common past sound to me like fiction. My siblings just don’t remember the past the way that I do.

There has been quite a bit of research in recent years about the accuracy of memory and one discovery about memory is pretty counter-intuitive. The stories we tell the most about our past are likely to contain more factual errors than ones that we do not tell. There is something in the process of recalling and telling the story of a memory that allows for a certain degree of creativity and change in the memory. In a sense, we are always crafting stories and the more practiced the story, the more details have been altered for the flow of the story. We create drama and excitement, raise the level of risk or uncertainty, and even adjust outcomes in order to make the story a good one to tell and hear.

It would seem that we are created for fiction.

Of course what makes fiction work is that it has a certain degree of credibility. A story that has no possibility of being true cannot hold our attention unless we are able to suspend disbelief. We need to have recognizable emotions and characters in order to associate with a story. When we venture into fiction, telling what might have been instead of what was, there needs to be enough that is like reality for the reader to remain engaged.

That’s one thing we’ve got down when it comes to storytelling in my family. We tell our stories with passion and conviction. So if our stories, especially those that have been told over and over, are embellished, how far are we from the realm of fiction?

I think a fiction writer has to know that the story is the product of imagination. If they are convinced that it is the truth it no longer can unfold like fiction. When telling the truth one doesn’t feel the freedom to substantially change the facts, insert new characters, play out different scenarios. Great fiction is far more than the product of a rambling mind with an inaccurate memory. Good fiction writing is a craft that must be honed and refined. A good editor is essential to the process. The story might all come out in a single session, but the crafting of fiction requires the tenacity to revisit the story, find the points where the energy is the greatest and determine where one story ends and another begins.

So I have not yet become a fiction writer. It seems unlikely that I ever will. Still, I appreciate good fiction and enjoy reading fiction. Who knows? There may yet be a reasonable short story in me.

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